Creating a window from World War II Germans,

New Ulmites

share experiences

By FRITZ BUSCH

Journal Staff Writer

"As we learn about these stories, may we rise above and eventually defeat the prejudices, fears and conflicts that otherwise demean, diminish and destroy us."

-- Michael Luick-Thrams

NEW ULM -- About a dozen relatives of German POWs met New Ulm residents and shared experiences Tuesday afternoon at the Brown County Museum Transportation Annex.

The Germans were interested in collecting artifacts and information related to the World War II German Prisoner of War camps in the Upper Midwest.

The tour of German POW camps was organized by Michael Luick-Thrams of TRACES, a non-profit educational organization created to gather, preserve and present stories of people from the Upper Midwest and Germany who encountered each other during World War II.

The visit to New Ulm included a visit to the Flandrau Group Park, which was the site where German POWs lived during their detainment in the United States.

About 500 German POWs passed through New Ulm during the war. They worked on area farms in local and area industry including Del Monte Corporation in Sleepy Eye and brick and tile yards as far away as Springfield.

Sonya Schuenart, who teaches junior and senior high English and art near Bremen in northern Germany, came to visit places where her grandfather was a POW.

"It's very exciting to see places where he was a POW," Schuenart said. "We're here for a remembrance tour, not for political attention."

Luick-Thrams said the Germans came to America to make an historical connection, create a window from World War II to the present, not dwell on the Third Reich (Nazi Germany).

"We want to look at the suffering the war caused, the human story from both sides," Luick-Thrams said. "Why people were kind and evil to each other. We want reconciliation with closure to World War II. There are still some open wounds."

Luick-Thrams said he encountered a heated verbal confrontation with an Iowa radio announcer who thought the German visitors had a hidden political agenda.

The Germans were amazed at the pristine condition of the New Ulm POW Camp. They hadn't seen anything like it in America.

New Ulmite Cal Verna Wilfahrt said she continues to correspond with the widow of a former German POW who recently died. She talked about how Germans were forced to spend up to three years in Europe helping rebuild British and French cities that were heavily bombed during the war.

Don Brand of New Ulm, who has visited Germany seven times, said he feels a strong kinship to German POWs. That feeling comes from New Ulm's German roots and the pro-German sentiment readily apparent in the community, he said.

Muriel Jeske of New Ulm remembered the German POWs as very friendly, good workers who often entertained with their singing and piano playing.

Jeske told the story of how some German POWs, who did not want to return to their homeland after the war, hid above camp latrines while law enforcement searched for them in nearby cornfields.

She recalled a German engineer who worked in the construction of bridges and buildings in the Soviet Union for years after the war. He wasn't allowed to return to Germany until he fell off a bridge, became disabled and was allowed to go home on a train.

The books "Behind Barbed Wire" and "Swords Into Plowshares" were noted for their accounts of New Ulm's German POW camp by Herb Schoper of New Ulm.

Luick-Thrams asked if a program exists that helps Americanized Germans visit Germany. Nobody was sure about such an organization.

"We didn't view Americans as enemies. They were all part of the system," Luick-Thrams said.

The Germans will conclude their U.S. tour by attending a conference on World War II-era POWs and visit a related exhibit in Muscatine, Iowa this weekend.